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Friday, April 15, 2016

THE BREWSPAPER / YANQUIS DRINK CUBA DRY

It was 100 degrees outside this Trinidad, Cuba restaurant. Perfect time for a cool cerveza.

The classic cliché be careful what you wish for has come
home to roost in Cuba.As relations
between the USA and the Communist isle have begun to normalize, who would have
thought the first crisis between the former political adversaries would be a
shortage of beer?

American
journalists on the front barstools of the crisis report as more

U.S.
tourists flock to Cuba not only are they taking up all the hotel rooms but
they’re drinking all the beer.So much
so that makers of the island’s favorite brews Cristal and Bucanero are mulling
building new breweries pronto to cope with the demand for suds.And, to stem the crisis becoming pandemic
breweries are importing beer from the Dominican Republic.

Add plenty
of humidity and it becomes thirsty work being a tourist, especially those
Americanos who aren’t used to the tropical climate.

Having
returned from a trip to Cuba recently, this blog reports it’s not uncommon to
down three or four beers during meals.The staple of the Cuban diet, pulled pork, beef, fresh fish, rice, rice
and more rice makes beer the perfect pairing for that cuisine.And, since tap water consumption for gringos
is still a no no--even in the best hotels—beer is the beverage of choice.

Cuba
received a record 3.5 million visitors last year, up 17% from 2014. American
visitors rose 77% to 161,000, in addition to hundreds of thousands of
Cuban-Americans, testing the country’s supply of hotel room, rental cars and
beer.

But to be
fair, the American’s aren’t 100% to blame.Because most of the world (read Canada and Europe) have been free to
visit Cuba, tourism has skyrocked even before the Yanqui détente.

Yes, it is
time to visit Cuba before there is a shortage of everything (except tourists).